sear

Dry; withered, especially of vegetation.

There are in all but three vvayes of going thither [to the moon]. […] [The] third, Old Empedocles vvay; vvho vvhen he leaped into Ætna, having a drie ſeare bodie, and light, the ſmoake took him and vvhift him up into the Moone, vvhere he lives yet vvaving up and dovvne like a feather, all foot and embers comming out of that cole-pit; our Poet met him, and talkt vvith him.

The autumn winds rushing / Waft the leaves that are searest, / But our flower was in flushing, / When blighting was nearest.

To char, scorch, or burn the surface of (something) with a hot instrument.

He likes to sear his steaks while maintaining rareness at the center.

I will sear the skin from your flesh. You will die a thousand deaths!

To wither; to dry up.

The drought was so severe as to sear the grass and the leaves of maple trees which had grown well for two years, standing in sward land by the roadside, and yet the corn, within ten feet, on the subsoiled land, did not roll once in the whole season, even at mid-day, and there was scarcely another piece in the neighborhood which escaped serious injury.

The spring and summer of 1936 brought to the Great Plains one of those terrible periodic droughts that sear the crops and convert the “short-grass country” into a desert.

To make callous or insensible.

To mark permanently, as if by burning.

The events of that day were seared into her memory.

A scar produced by searing